What would happen if you woke up today & forgot who you were?

One day I woke up thinking, “What if I’d woken up this morning and had no idea who I was? What if I realized I had amnesia? How would my life be different? Would I remember I always woke up depressed and anxious? Would I remember I was afraid to start my days because they always seemed to go from bad to worse? Would I remember how bad I felt about myself?

The idea felt like a lightening bolt.

Who would you be?

If I didn’t know I was Heidi Connolly with her ego, identity, knowledge, experiences, beliefs, and her emotional, mental, and spiritual constructs, who would I be?

Start with depression. How would I know I was depressed if I didn’t know I had a reason—or didn’t have a reason—to be depressed? Without a label of “depression,” would I even look for such a reason? If I couldn’t remember why, would I still tell myself I felt that way? Without any validating external factors in evidence—my friend dissed me or my husband forgot my birthday or I hate my job—how would I know how to be, how to act? Would I feel anything at all?

If everything we are and everything we do is in direct relationship to the world around us, how do we ever know what is simply a reaction to stimuli or a true act of self?

What defines us?

You might say they’re the same thing. If there’s nothing to react to, no outside stimulus, then what provides us with an identity? How much does the backdrop of your life color, constitute, create, give birth to, support, confine, define, and refine you?

Say I woke up and the first thing I heard was, “Hey, Shirley, are you going to walk the dog this morning?” How long would it take before the message kicked in that (1) I wasn’t called Shirley, (2) I don’t have a dog, and (3) I’m usually by myself when I wake up, so, um…who was talking to me?

In that moment, however brief, before realization of self/ego takes over, who would I be then? And if there’s a “me” that isn’t tied to the experience of being Heidi and the experiences that have created her, what would be left?

What if there were no labels?

How might you experience the world if all your labels and beliefs fell away?

• Would you discover you don’t like scrambled eggs anymore or that the color on the walls drives you insane?
• Would you discover you weren’t afraid of the deep woods anymore or that you’d forgotten how to swim?
• What part of who you are is founded on muscle memory, signals that underlie and reinforce a habituated, patterned life? One that, as a human, is based on profound constructs that you label reality? How often do you hear, “It’s just the way I am. I can’t change now.” Have you said it yourself?
• If you forgot why you were angry at your parents, would you still be angry?
• If you forgot why you had a stack of fencing materials in your driveway, would you remember you didn’t like your neighbors?

If, magically, the experiences that have shaped you were to no longer be part of your consciousness, who would you be?

Shifting gears

I’d like to think there’s someone else in there—inside me, inside you. Someone who is free to make choices based on senses outside the mind’s projection. Free to be curious and open without holding on so tightly to beliefs that may have outlived their feasibility. Free of constricting identity and ego.

Free to be…me.

Free to be you.

Free to be.